User blog:Njalm2/My Apology
Hello there, users of Naruto Fanon, I think that in light of all of this and as a former Administrator for this Community that I owe you all one hell of an apology. Now, I don't want any of you to think that this is a pity party, I don't do pity parties. Besides, I am indeed responsible for this and I take my duties seriously enough to accept that this is my fault, I won't be attempting to make excuses for myself, because I've got the wisdom to acknowledge that you were indeed correct. I have been a douchebag to many of you. I've thought a bit lately, and I've come to identify many of the mistakes I've made, I'm an arrogant bastard, but I've also been blessed with this amazing superpower called "Self-Insight". This means that I've got the self-respect and the intelligence to analyze my own past actions as an Administrator here on NF, and when I started scrutinizing myself I found that I've indeed done a lot of things wrong, and many have suffered from my mistakes. I will now acknowledge what I've done. I'm the kind of guy who wants things too strongly, this sometimes leads me to step on others to get what I want and it makes me cold and pigheaded in the face of adversity. I'm also very intense and I stand by my values unflinchingly, it takes an explosion of good arguments to make me change my mind once its really set. While I most certainly pursued higher quality, an endeavour which I appearantly ultimately succeeded in. I also acknowledge that yes, I've been much more callous and mean-spirited towards the users than necessary, much beyond what is acceptable of a person in my station. I've not done anything to make new users feel welcome, in fact, I've imposed my own sense of order and perfection and expected everyone else to follow it. The good users were overly favored, but the new users, those who had yet to get used to fanon, they constantly fell between two chairs. I put the users I liked on a pedestal and I completely ignored those whose work I didn't respect or appreciate. I destroyed their confidence and shattered their pride in their work and made them feel bad about it. I was simply put an elitist, I commanded you all to excel based upon my own standards and when I felt that those standards weren't met, I put you guys down and stepped on you. I remember once discussing one of True Shinobi's characters with him, he was eager to hear my input, unfortunately there were some mistakes in the character and without thinking about the effort he had placed into the character, I pointed out every single flaw, made note of every single clichè and gave him not a single word in consolosation. While I did indeed give him advice, I don't think I taught him anything at all. So, True Shinobi, I apologize for the way I treated you, I should've been much more gentle than I was. Looking back, there were several situations like these, where I completely neglected to consider the feelings of anyone but myself, and how I thought about the work, I never stopped to consider what these articles meant to you guys. I forgot that not everyone are as extreme and driven as I am. I should still have called you on it of course, that was the entire point of my position, but I should've learned how to approach you in a friendly and more helpful manner, taught you the basic steps before expecting you all to fly. However, I want all of you to know, that my intentions were never to make you feel ashamed or stupid. I always had only good intentions, and my actions, however misguided and biased were all made in the hope of bettering the wiki, even if they resulted in me ignoring and marginalizing the community in exchange. So yes, I want to apologize to all of you, and if there's someone who desire a personal apology from me, just post your troubles in the comments and I'll get to them immediately. Alternatively you may contact me on Chatango, my username is Njalm. Whether you accept my apology or not is up to you, if there are some among you I've hurt so bad that you feel you can't forgive me, that's fine too. As an act of goodwill, even though I'm no longer the Mizukage I will nominate my potential successors, so that you might restore the balance as expediently as possible. Kazeyo, Kaycherry and Pythonraptor. Allow me to present to you all, the Mizukage Council! Before I was fired, I was asked by several users to find a replacement, given how my activity had dropped immensely due to a declining interest in Naruto. At the time I answered that I would relinquish my post once the userbase found someone who could take my place, this put many of you in an absolute bind as people like me aren't all that common. I apologize for this lack of responsibility as well. I have however noticed, that certain users on this fanon possess certain qualities which would be highly attractive in a candidate, only that they often lack certain other qualities I would deem appropriate. So, I thought, that perhaps it would work better if the Mizukage position was split evenly between three such talented people, whom, while they might have shortcomings on their own can work together to achieve the same things as a single one can do. As three people, the Mizukage Council can scrutinize one another better than a single person, which would serve to prevent another case like mine. As I was the Guinea Pig for this project, I can safely say that the Mizukage is a position which gives an enormous amount of power to a single individual. In fact, it probably gives too much power by far to be given to a single person. Thus, its mandatory to split it between at least three people. These would all ideally have one specialty which they do excellently in, and they'd have power over that specific category and nothing more. The suggested categories are Roleplays, Content and Voice. Roleplays: This category deals explicitly with roleplays of all kinds, this person should be a great roleplayer and be well-versed in the various rules and common courtesies, this person can also act as a referee who can help roleplayers settle certain disputes in a neutral and friendly manner. They're also expected to help others increase the quality of their roleplays. I nominate Kazeyo for this position. Content: This fellow possesses the jurisdiction over general content, this doesn't include roleplays but is instead limited to ensuring that ALL users follow the manual of style, use proper spelling and grammar and last, but not least, to provide ample oppurtunities for reviews in order to help the userbase consistently improve at their own pace. Rather than setting the pace for them as I did. I nominate and recommend Pythonraptor for this position, as he's a very good writer with quite a bit of experience. Voice: The Voice isn't expected to sing, but rather she is the public face of the Mizukage, she represents their pull in the system and she is the one making announcements, most of the time she's merely the spokesperson for what the trio has discussed privately. Should a new Policy be needed in regards to content or such, permanent or otherwise, the Voice will be the one taking care of it and presenting it to the community. Among the trio, the Voice is probably the only branch which would require Admin Powers. I nominate and recommend Kaycherry for this role. ---- Last, as a closing statement of sorts, I want to tell every single user that you mustn't be afraid of openly declaring your disapproval towards the Administration whenever you feel they're doing something wrong. Don't get discouraged if you're shot down when you talk to them one on one, cause when you're talking to them on your own, its often just your word against theirs. However, if you are to make your complaints publically known through a Blog or a forum post, then they'll need to look at it officially, and you could then gather votes and thus you could affect a change. According to Ten, this wiki is ruled by consensus If you do not actively scrutinize the acts of the Administration, and decide whether or not you want to abide by it, and if you don't, remain unwilling to actually speak your mind, then they obviously won't know what is going on at all. When Admins receive no negative feedback on what they're doing, then they tend to assume that everything is running smoothly and that there are no complaints, very rarely do they stop to think about whether or not this means that there are some people who're too timid to make their voices heard. Category:Blog posts